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This evening's music features blues singer and songwriter Big Mama Thorton. Enjoy!

“As long as they killed people with conventional rather than nuclear weapons, they were praised as humanitarian statesmen. As long as they did not use nuclear weapons, it appeared, nobody was going to give the right name to all the killing that had been going on since the end of the Second World War, which was surely “World War Three.”

-- Kurt Vonnegut

News and Opinion

British PM Willing to Nuke Hundreds of Thousands; Parliament Approves Funding

In one of the first high profile parliamentary debates since she took over the premiership last week, British PM Theresa May today insisted she would have no hesitation in ordering nuclear strikes abroad that would kill hundreds of thousands of civilians.

The somewhat blunt, somewhat genocidal answer appears to have been the right one for the crowd, as it wasn’t long thereafter that parliament agreed to spend upward of $40 billion modernizing their nuclear weapons arsenal. Many analysts have suggested that the $40 billion is a gross underestimate, and the nukes will end up costing far more. ...

With Labour’s leader Jeremy Corbyn being open that he “does not believe the threat of mass murder is a legitimate way to go about international relations,” and that he absolutely would not kill millions of innocent people, May ultimately decided to go the other, pro-nuclear holocaust way.

Weird 'confession' doesn't solve mystery of who led attempted coup in Turkey

Reports emerged on Monday that Akin Oztürk, a retired air force general, was responsible for the organized but short-lived effort to unseat Erdogan.

Oztürk initially told the Dogan News Agency that "not only I was not involved at any part of this coup attempt that jeopardized our country and our democracy, I also tried my best to end it with minimum damage to our people."

But later in the day, after appearing in an Ankara courtroom along with 26 other generals and admirals, state news reported that he pled guilty to being the mastermind. Pictures show him sporting bruises and injuries on his face and arms.

The lack of certainty hasn't stopped Erdogan from launching a vast effort to arrest and fire members of what his supporters have long called a "parallel state" opposed to the rule of the president's Islamist party.

At an unseemly fast speed after the coup, thousands of judges, local governors, administrators, cops, and members of the military were removed from their jobs, suspended, or arrested — including some who likely had no hand in the planning of the coup, such as magistrates. ...

Johannes Hahn, the European Union commissioner dealing with Turkey's application to join the EU, said the purging had the hallmarks of an orchestrated move. "It looks at least as if something has been prepared. The lists are available, which indicates it was prepared and to be used at a certain stage," he told Reuters.

Many Who Opposed Coup in Turkey Came Out in Support of Democratic Process, not the President

Turkey Widens Post-Coup Purge

The official number of detained people in the wake of Friday’s failed coup in Turkey has now passed 7,500, with estimates that over 20,000 people have either been arrested or fired from their jobs on allegations they were in some way involved. ...

In the somewhat longer-term the continuation of the crackdown seems to be leading toward a return of the death penalty, with President Erdogan insisting that “the people on the streets” want to see those involved executed, insisting they don’t want to “keep them and feed them in prisons for years to come.”

How broad the use of the death penalty will be is also a matter of speculation, though the mass detentions and the holding of large numbers of people stripped and bound in large common rooms surrounded by armed guards certainly doesn’t give the impression that the court system, or what is left of it after the purge, is going to be handling the matter in a traditional manner.

Kurdish Activist: Erdogan Should Be Pushed Out, But by the People, Not the Military

Turkey Detains Over 7,500 People As Crackdown Widens After Bloody Coup Attempt

Turkish police have asked citizens to report people who “support terrorism" as government critics warn of possible human rights abuses.

At least 7,500 people have been detained since the bloody coup attempt in Turkey, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vows to “clean all state institutions of the virus” of Fethullah Gulen supporters.

In the wake of Friday’s failed overthrow, Erdogan has carried out an enormous purge of Turkey’s state institutions. The country’s Interior Ministry has fired close to 9,000 people thus far, among them 30 governors, state-run media reported Monday.

Turkey has blamed Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in self-exile on a Pennsylvania compound and Erdogan’s arch-rival, of orchestrating the botched coup. Gulen, who has a global following, denies any involvement and has instead accused the government of possibly staging the coup. ...

The number of people who died in clashes during the attempted coup has risen to at least 290, according to Turkey’s foreign ministry, with more than 1,400 injured. ...

At least 2,389 soldiers and 29 generals have been taken into custody. Turkey has also detained several thousand judges accused of supporting the plot to overthrow the government.

Turkey FM: Criticizing prosecution of plotters amounts to backing coup

Criticism from other nations about Turkey's treatment of suspected coup plotters amounts to support for the failed attempt to topple the government, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Monday.

While most of Turkey's allies have stood beside its elected government, it has witnessed "unacceptable" criticism about legal measures against and the prosecution of alleged instigators of the military coup on July 15, Cavusoglu said in a an emailed statement.

Medea Benjamin: Why Is Government Downplaying Saudi-9/11 Docs After Keeping Them Secret for Years?

US-Led Airstrikes in Syria Kill 77 in 'Worst Week' for Civilian Deaths

Dozens of civilians, including children, were killed on Monday and Tuesday by U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria. ...

Fifty-six civilians were killed on Tuesday by coalition forces, and 21 civilians were killed by the coalition on Monday. The 77 civilian deaths included at least 11 children.

Nine families killed in early morning alleged Coalition strikes at Tokhaz July 19, with victims buried in mass grave https://t.co/5fPFGmQF15

— Airwars (@airwars_) July 19, 2016

MH-17: Two Years of Anti-Russian Propaganda

Perhaps it’s only fitting that as we reach the second anniversary of the horrific shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flights 17, The New York Times would mark the occasion by once more using the tragedy as a propaganda club to advance the neocon goal of a new, costly and very dangerous Cold War with Russia.

On Saturday, the Times again demonstrated its disdain for normal journalistic practices as it picked up an amateur assertion that the Russians had faked satellite imagery showing Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile systems in eastern Ukraine before the civilian airliner was blown out of the sky on July 17, 2014.

Since that moment, the Times and other mainstream Western publications have been determined to pin the blame for the deaths of 298 people on Russian President Vladimir Putin so the world could plunge ahead into the latest neocon scheme of destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia with the eventual aim of “regime change” in Moscow.

As revolting as it has been to watch the deaths of innocents exploited in the name of big-power geopolitics, what has been most troubling from a journalistic perspective is that the Times has cast aside any pretense of professional objectivity, much as it did during the deception of the American public over Iraq’s fictitious weapons of mass destruction in 2002-2003.

In this latest burst of anti-Russian propaganda, the Times gives great weight to some bloggers who applied a computer program supposedly to show that two Russian government satellite images were manipulated. The point is to cast doubt on whether the Ukrainian military had missiles in place in eastern Ukraine that could have shot down MH-17.

What the Times leaves out is the fact that Western intelligence has already confirmed that Ukraine’s military did have powerful anti-aircraft missiles in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. Last October, a Dutch intelligence report stated that fact based on NATO intelligence gathering, i.e., the West’s own satellite and other data collection.

Indeed, the Netherlands’ Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) concluded that the only anti-aircraft weapons in eastern Ukraine capable of bringing down MH-17 at 33,000 feet belonged to the Ukrainian government, not the ethnic Russian rebels.

MIVD made that assessment in the context of explaining why commercial aircraft continued to fly over the eastern Ukrainian battle zone in summer 2014. (The MH-17 flight had originated in Amsterdam and carried many Dutch citizens, explaining why the Netherlands took the lead in the investigation.)

El Salvador could start going after war criminals — and the government isn’t happy

El Salvador's government — which is headed by former left wing guerrillas from the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, the FMLN — is very unhappy with last week's supreme court ruling that the country's 1993 amnesty law is unconstitutional.

The amnesty had protected them from prosecution for crimes committed during the country's bloody 12-year civil war that ended with peace accords signed in 1992. It also protected the extreme right wing politicians and military officers who they fought, and who are accused of the bulk of the atrocities.

Now the former rebels say the repeal of the law could refuel old conflicts and destabilize the country more than two decades since the end of the war that killed an estimated 85,000 people. ...

The court's decision also puts pressure on the military that has never faced justice for massacres committed during the war, such as the one in which soldiers killed about 1,000 campesinos at El Mazote in 1981. There is also the case of the recently beatified archbishop of San Salvador, Óscar Romero, who was killed in 1980, and the murder of six jesuit priests in 1989.

Mexico's president just apologized for his embarrassing 'White House' scandal

Mexico's President Enrique Peña Nieto has apologized for the so-called Casa Blanca, or White House, scandal in which a favored government contractor built a multi-million dollar mansion for his family.

"I apologize for the White House, I made a mistake. A mistake that affected my family and damaged the institution of the presidency," Peña Nieto said while signing new laws that promise to deal with rampant public distrust of politicians by making corruption more difficult. "I reiterate my sincere and deep apology for the damage I caused."

The scandal broke in November 2014 when the news website Aristegui Noticias revealed that a subsidiary of the company Grupo Higa had built a very large residence designed specifically for Peña Nieto's family. The mansion, in an exclusive part of the capital, was built shortly before he was elected president in 2012, while he was governor of Mexico State.

Grupo Higa already held important contracts with Mexico State and went on to win more from the federal government after Peña Nieto took office. The company is owned by a personal friend of the president, Juan Armando Hinojosa, who also figures prominently in the secretive international money movements recently revealed by the so-called Panama Papers leak.

Zika emergency pushes women to challenge Brazil's abortion law

Women’s groups in Brazil are set to challenge the abortion laws this summer in the hope of making a safe and legal termination possible for women at risk of delivering a baby born with defects after exposure to the Zika virus. ...

Lawyers for the organisations will present a legal challenge at the supreme court in the first week of August, when the court sits again after the winter break. They are co-ordinated by Anis Instituto de Bioética, which campaigns for women’s equality and reproductive rights.

The groups have obtained an opinion from lawyers at Yale University in the US, who argue that the Brazilian government’s policies on Zika and microcephaly have breached women’s human rights. The government “has failed to enact adequate measures to ensure that all women have access to comprehensive reproductive health information and options, as required by Brazil’s public health and human rights commitments”, says a review from the Global Health Justice Partnership, which is a joint initiative of the Yale Law School and the Yale School of Public Health.

It is also critical of Brazil’s handling of the epidemic. Its “failure to ensure adequate infrastructure, public health resources and mosquito control programmes in certain areas has greatly exacerbated the Zika and Zika-related microcephaly epidemics, particularly among poor women of racial minorities”, the review says.

Apparently, Wall Street thinks that Rump might actually repeal Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Reimplementing Glass-Steagall is also in the Dem platform, but Wall Street doesn't seem to be grumbling about Hillary. It's the dog that didn't bark.

Glass-Steagall: Wall Street is not happy with Donald Trump

Wall Street is not pleased.

A top advisor to presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump said on Monday that the party wants to reimplement Glass-Steagall, Depression-era legislation that was designed to prevent big bank "supermarkets," but which was repealed in 1999. ...

In a seeming contradiction, the 2016 Republican platform simultaneously calls for the dismantling of Dodd-Frank. ... Calling for the repeal of Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the legislation that in 1999 took Glass-Steagall off the books, is politically expedient on a number of levels for Trump, one banker said.

For one, the legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, and the narrative gives Trump further opportunity to attack Hillary Clinton. ... Further, Trump's willingness to take on Wall Street could resonate with disenfranchised Bernie Sanders supporters who are now on the fence, another Wall Street pro noted.

For all of Wall Street's surprise, however, a common link between supporters and detractors of the Trump campaign was their expectations for legislation that would simultaneously tear down Dodd-Frank, and reimplement Glass-Steagall. While the prospect of legislation to that effect becoming reality is intimidating, finance pros think other checks and balances within the U.S. government will head off the GOP candidate's pledge to rearrange Wall Street.

"No one is actually worried this will become law," one banker said.

Both Democrat and Republican Platforms Have Had It With Frankenbanks

Breaking up the dangerous banks on Wall Street that are gambling with their taxpayer-backstopped insured deposits by restoring the Glass-Steagall Act is now a part of the newly adopted platforms of both the Democrat and Republican parties. Under a restored Glass-Steagall Act, banks holding insured deposits would not be allowed to affiliate with Wall Street investment banks and brokerage firms that regularly underwrite risky securities and engage in trillions of dollars of derivative gambles. It would effectively put an end to the idea that these complex banks are too-big-to-fail because the life savings of small savers holding insured deposits in the bank would be at risk.

Bernie Sanders’ supporters pushed the Democratic Party to include the provision in its platform. Today’s media spin is that Trump & Company added it in hopes of picking up some Sanders’ supporters who have vowed not to vote for Hillary Clinton.

What has been lost in the frenzy of political posturing is that there already exists a bi-partisan bill in the Senate to restore the Glass-Steagall Act. It’s called the “21^st Century Glass-Steagall Act of 2015” and is co-sponsored by progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren and Republican Senator John McCain among others. ...

The frankenbank, or universal banking model, is now teetering across Europe as well as in the U.S. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal tallied up the losses and ran this sobering headline: “The Big-Bank Bloodbath: Losses Near Half a Trillion Dollars.” According to the author of the article, David Reilly: “Since the start of 2016, 20 of the world’s bigger banks have lost a quarter of their combined market value. Added up, it equals about $465 billion, according to FactSet data.”

Baton Rouge Killer: What is Driving Violent Retaliation By Lone Gunmen?

Fox News' Megyn Kelly accuses Roger Ailes of sexual harassment: Report

Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly told investigators she was sexually harassed by CEO Roger Ailes, the Daily Intelligencer reports, less than two weeks after Gretchen Carlson made similar allegations against him.

Two sources told the New York Magazine publication that Kelly told a team handling an outside investigation into Ailes' behavior that she, too, was the victim of sexual advances from the Fox News executive about a decade ago. The probe is being handled by New York-based law firm Paul, Weiss, Kelly, on behalf of Fox News' parent company 21st Century Fox.

Roger Ailes 'to be fired' from Fox News amid sexual harassment claims

Rupert Murdoch is reportedly preparing to fire Fox News chairman and chief executive Roger Ailes following allegations that he axed one of the station’s star anchors after she refused to have sex with him.

Murdoch, and his sons James and Lachlan, are said to have decided that Ailes, one of the most powerful executives in US media, should be dropped from the station he helped found 20 years ago, which has grown into one of the most profitable news brands in the world.

New York magazine quoted several unnamed sources claiming the Murdochs, who run Fox’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, have made the decision to part ways with Ailes and he could be removed with days. In a statement, 21st Century Fox said: “This matter is not yet resolved and the review is not concluded.” The company refused to answer any further questions about the situation.

An excellent history of the "right" to vote in the US, definitely worth a read.

America’s Failure to Protect Voting

With their government under the control of corporations and special interests, the People of the United States may think they at least have the right to vote, but, unfortunately, they do not. When the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written, the authors intentionally omitted this very significant detail. They failed to include the right to vote, and the error has never been corrected.

Most Americans are unaware that they, unlike the citizens of most other democracies, do not have a basic constitutional right to vote. The constitutions of Germany and Japan adopted after World War II include a specific right to vote. Even in nations, such as Afghanistan and Iraq — where Americans are fighting to impose democratic governments — the people already have a constitutional right to vote. Of 120 constitutional democracies in the world, only 11, including the United States, fail to explicitly guarantee a right to vote in their constitutions. ...

As the result of a series of amendments, people of color, women, and young people over the age of 18 cannot be deprived of the right to vote because of their status; however, nowhere in the Constitution does it say they have a fundamental right to vote in the first place.

Fearing an “excess of democracy,” a majority of the delegates who gathered at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 decided to replace the Articles of Confederation with a central representative government that preserved the power of the economic and social elite and left voting matters up to the states.

James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution and the subsequent Bill of Rights, publicly stated the electors of the new government would be “the great body of the people of the United States.” In private, however, he worried that, “In future times, a great majority of the people will not only be without landed, but any other sort of, property. These will either combine under the influence of their common situation; in which case, the rights of property and the public liberty will not be secure in their hands.”

John Adams was even more direct. In opposition to allowing electors other than property owners, he said “There will be no end of it. New claims will arise. Women will demand a vote. Lads from 12 to 21 will think their rights not enough attended to, and every man, who has not a farthing, will demand an equal vote.”

Republican Congressman Steve King Sets White Supremacist Tone in Cleveland

Steve King, A Republican congressman from Iowa, insisted on Monday that there was nothing wrong with the lack of diversity at the Republican National Convention since, he said, members of other races had contributed relatively little to human civilization.

King’s literal assertion of white supremacy, in response to criticism of the party by the Esquire blogger Charlie Pierce, came during a live appearance on MSNBC, and seemed to stun the host, Chris Hayes, as well as Pierce and April Ryan, American Urban Radio Networks’ Washington bureau chief. ...

King’s frank defense of the disproportionately white makeup of the Republican party came just days after Speaker Paul Ryan inadvertently drew attention to the same problem, by posting a selfie on Instagram showing the lack of diversity in the party’s current crop of Capitol Hill interns.

That exact moment where Congressman Steve King goes full white supremacist. An ahistorical mess. Textbook racism.https://t.co/g6waq3I8fC

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) July 19, 2016

Trump Is Doing What Matters Most for Winning the Election

Melania Trump’s Plagiarism is not important. Look, if you’re a college-educated intellectual like myself, or a college-educated journalist, you think plagiarism is a bad thing.

Most ordinary people do not care very much. It’s just not very important.

Would better handle the economy:

Trump: 52%
Clinton: 44%

(CNN/ORC Poll) pic.twitter.com/4OKxR4PFjL

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) July 19, 2016

So. Is it more important if Melania plagiarized a paragraph from Michelle Obama, or is it more important if Trump can handle the economy better than Clinton?

Federal Agents Went Undercover To Spy on Anti-Fracking Movement, Emails Reveal

When more than 300 protesters assembled in May at the Holiday Inn in Lakewood, Colorado — the venue chosen by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for an auction of oil and gas leases on public lands — several of the demonstrators were in fact undercover agents sent by law enforcement to keep tabs on the demonstration, according to emails obtained by The Intercept. ...

The emails, which were obtained through an open records act request, show that the Lakewood Police Department collected details about the protest from undercover officers as the event was being planned. During the auction, both local law enforcement and federal agents went undercover among the protesters.

The emails further show that police monitored Keep it in the Ground participating groups such as 350.org, Break Free Movement, Rainforest Action Network, and WildEarth Guardians, while relying upon intelligence gathered by Anadarko, one of the largest oil and gas producers in the region. ...

BLM reimbursed the Lakewood police for costs associated with covering the protest, the emails and a scanned copy of the check show.

Soaring Temperatures Will Make It Too Hot to Work, UN Warns

Searing temperatures caused by climate change may cost global economies more than $2 trillion by 2030, restricting working hours in some of the poorest parts of the world, according to United Nations research.

As many as 43 countries, especially those in Asia, including China, Indonesia, and Malaysia, will experience declines in their economies because of heat stress, says Tord Kjellstrom, a director at the Health and Environment International Trust, based in Nelson, New Zealand. As a result, China’s gross domestic product would be reduced 1 percent and Indonesia’s by 6 percent by 2030.

Extreme heat in Southeast Asia already curbs annual working hours by 15 to 20 percent, and that figure could double by 2050 as climate change progresses, according to the paper published in Asia-Pacific Journal of Public Health on Tuesday. ...

“With heat stress, you cannot keep up the same intensity of work, and we’ll see reduced speed of work and more rest in labor-intensive industries,” Kjellstrom said. “Rich countries have the financial resources to adapt to climate change.”

'Mr. Coal' and a Climate Change Skeptic Given Key Energy Posts in Aussie Cabinet

Australia's post-election Cabinet reshuffle is great news for the fossil fuels sector but portends doom for the environment, according to green groups who are raising alarm about the government's newly appointed ministers dealing with climate change and resources.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who was re-elected in the July 2 general election, announced his new cabinet Monday. Among other shifts, Turnbull appointed Josh Frydenberg to oversee a newly expanded Environment and Energy ministry and promoted senator Matt Canavan to Minister for Resources and Northern Australia.

Outgoing Environment Minister Greg Hunt, who has been criticized for "sidestepping" the central role of climate change and heat stress in widespread coral bleaching, will now become Innovation Minister. ...

But given the ministers' records on climate change and fossil fuels, environmentalists were far less enthusiastic.

New Matilda reports:

Frydenberg has been a major advocate for coal, and has echoed Tony Abbott's belief that the mineral is "good for humanity." In an interview with [conservative political commentator] Andrew Bolt last year, Frydenberg said "I certainly believe in the moral case that Tony Abbott and others have put that our coal, our gas, our energy supplies do lift people out of energy poverty, and that's going to be an important theme of my term in this role."

In the interview Bolt described the Minister as the "new Mr. Coal."

To that end, Greenpeace campaigner Nikola Casule said Frydenberg's views on climate change were "an embarrassing relic from a different era."

"For Malcolm Turnbull to appoint a minister who still believes that there is still a strong moral case for coal even during the worst coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef's history is clear show of contempt for the Australian public," he said.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Do police treat Black Lives Matter and 'White Lives Matter' differently?

Why Clinton could still tap Wall Street talent despite platform pledge

The Long, Sad, Corrupted Devolution of the GOP, From Eisenhower to Donald Trump

A Little Night Music

Big Mama Thornton - Hound Dog, Down Home Shakedown

Big Mama Thornton - Big Mama's Bumble Bee Blues

Big Mama Thornton - They call me big mama

Big Mama Thornton - Let's Go Get Stoned

Big Mama Thornton - Hound Dog (Take 2)

Big Mama Thornton & Muddy Waters Blues Band - Life Goes On

Big Mama Thornton - Born Under A Bad Sign

Big Mama Thornton - Rolling Stone